Friday, May 15, 2015

“Awakened
in the middle of the night, lightning flashes, thunder, two
simultaneous claps, the roar of air planes, I rear up in bed. window
glass shatters all around. I let go of the Steif Monkey, leap out of
bed, rush to the window that looks out on the woods, open its two
panels, broken shards lying all around, and hear the German Shepherd
dog Mara yowling hysterically in her enclosure, a yowling that
becomes more and more high pitched, a whimpering and then ceases,
throttled. The roar of planes disappears in a north-westerly
direction.

It
takes me a long time to fall back asleep, hugging the stuffed monkey.
I awake early, earlier than anyone else, I sneak down the staircase
and walk out onto the veranda and notice that the glass of the large
windows and the veranda door has shattered, too, and that the
shattered glass, mingled with dewdrops, looks like tear drops in
flower heads, and I wipe the sleep out of my eyes. Walking out to
Mara’s Zwinger [enforcer] enclosure/ pound, on a section of the
lawn invisible from the veranda - a square 100 by 100 foot firtree
shaded area, which bears the name “croquet” playing ground -
there is the frightful sight of Mara hanging slackly by her collar
from the highest wire. Klinner, our foreman, another early bird,
comes by about the same time and tells me that two bombs have fallen
near the riding rink, leaving two craters, "like graves" he
said, right next to each other. The story went, so Klinner said, that
the British bombers were afraid to actually penetrate the air-space
over Bremen, which was defended by dirigibles with razor wire sharp
enough to cut a bomber wings, which is why they dropped their bombs
at "the outskirts of town.” He proceeds to cut down Mara and
deposits her in his wheelbarrow. Klinner most times is with his
wheelbarrow, a rake and a spade. He is dressed neatly, as always,
knickerbokker pants, metal clips to keep their catching in his
bicycle chain, a visored cap.

The
above account pretty much is my recollection – one of the very few
from what I call my “Expulsion from Paradise” - in Spring 1941.
As compared to the first screen memory - where I can’t tell whether
it is also a perfect memory, re-arranged so as to create a “likely
story,” a secondary revision in time - in this instance I realize
that memory has edited the events, compounded them and rearranged
them. The person I would like to call b a different angel's name but
must call "I" - since I am indeed dissociated from him not
only by time and space but by fallible memory - was indeed wakened by
two bombs that fell near simultaneously about 100 yards off in the
Fir Place woods, during what I thought was the first bombing attack
on Bremen

which
first attack actually occurred a few months earlier, on January 3.
The British had dropped leaflets in September of 1939. Altogether,
appr. 1,000,000 bombs were dropped, resulting in 75,000 wounded &
4000 death during the course of appr. 175 attacks! In other words,
Bremen, like most German and many European cities, was a good place
to get away from. The estate was not bombed again, however upon my
return three years later bombing attacks became near daily events and
a nearby – five miles off - much-sought-after target, were the
above-ground bunkers in Blumenthal (Flowervalley) where submarines
were constructed. The fir forest started to look like a Chistmas tree
bedecked with tinsel that was meant to distract the radar, and
aluminum beer kegs were put up at every street corner and emitted the
kind of fog that in fact was typical of lowland weather. Thousands of
squirrels were on the loose nipping of the the tips of fir branches?
No, ack-ack splinters covered the fir forest and became collector's
items; most intriguing were the aluminum shard from tracer shells
from the night attacks.

=======

The
flashes of two 500 pound bombs exploding on the ground one hundred
yards away cannot be seen through 100 yards of thick fir forest –
that was either a fantasy that occurred at the moment that I heard
the bombs detonate; or a subsequent construction; perhaps the sound
of thunder elicited a hallucinated lightning flash in my mind. By the
time this then goodified little boy – either still clutching or not
his toy monkey - reaches the shattered window of his second floor
room and opens the window and looks out the dog's yowling may have
ceased (although the sound of animals screaming becomes part of my
interior sound landscape after I possibly merely hallucinate the
sound of animals screaming during a visit to Berlin when the Berlin
zoo is bombed). Something in me was I imagine appropriately
hysterical as I listened to the sounds of bombers disappearing in a
north-westerly direction. The idea that Mara had committed suicide
must have been either an instant projection at the sight of the dead
dog hanging slackly, by its collar, from the top of its fenced
enclosure, or a backward projection of my self-direccted fury at
being packed off, perhaps that very same day, on my three year travel
with the hated Ms. No.

Thus
fantasy has added its components.

The
terrified hysterical shepherd dog indeed strangled herself with her
collar at an upper part of the fence of her enclosure [The Zwinger]
but “Enforcer” also referred to my governess whose orders, whose
numerous “nos” elicited my resistance and fury; say, the fury of
a stubborn billy goat; the dog’s fury also signified my near
suicidal fury at having to leave paradise in company of my enforcer,
my governess. In other words, the details have been over-emphasized,
compacted, over-determined and that is why they most likely have been
remembered all these many years, whereas other less emotionally
determined and charged recollections seem to be, are inaccessible.

The
drops of dew in the flowers - not just the shattered shards of glass
- also signified my tears (perhaps just shed internally: after all,
as I have said, something started to cry inside me early on in life,
and, on reflection, I think that is appropriate, and I hope I am not
crying only for myself and early childhood misfortune but for all
children who are subjected to bombing attacks; I can be said to have
been crying ever since I was taken from my mother at age 9 months,
those tears, too, are, became over-determined. Loss loss loss. There
was a time during the many years that I carried this book with me
that I was going to call it “Irretrievable Losses.” This
commentary in other words, appears to be necessary in telling this
event which elicited hectic activity of the inhabitants of the villa
with the result that within a day or so my father’s chauffeur
Schmidt (who had previously been in my grandfater's employ and whose
son Pitt / Peter would become one of my earliest childhood friends,
and the only one with whom I came back in touch during the writing of
this book) and the Maybach automobile took me and my governess to the
St. Magnus suburban station, a five year old, sad-looking boy and a
dowdy spinster - image for a film! (That film has been made!) But
before I left my paradise it appears that I made one more walk about
the forest.

If
the clearing was the first section of Fir Place to become laden with
dream imagery, for the Billy goat chasing me up to the clearing in my
first remembered nightmare, the croquet area, where Mara "committed
suicide," then became the second, soon after the enclosure
disappeared as did the last remnants of playing croquet – the
mallet, the wire goals, the colored balls, the sound that croquet
balls make when hit with malletts or knocking against each never
fading uniquely recalled forever – a big chopping block was placed
there, and as a chopping block area it would serve as location for
yet a further screen memory a few years hence.

Forgetting
momentarily about the significance of the pond and the willow lined
path between the pond and the marshy meadow to the left, the third
areas to be specifically laden with memories and fears were the two
bomb craters near the riding rink, craters well on the other of the
road that skirted the pond before leading up the chestnut alley to
the house. It appears I made an expedition to the site and looked at
the two grave-length bomb beds is what they looked like more than
funnels or craters, as though the two-some had landed as a pair,
sideways. When I made my first awkward drawings, with colored
pencils, it was of awkwardly drawn bombers tossing sausage-like
bombs. By the time of the drawings, say a year after the first bombs
fell, I lived secreted away in the far south-eastern part of the then
still expanding Reich, in the village of Vornbach. I must have gotten
wind of what village boys did by throwing shit at each other which is
what bombers appeared to do, at the stage of anality or is it
monkeydom that village boys reside in at that stage of their life. So
if bombers threw shit, the two bomb craters or graves were what??? I
kept thinking of them, and that they were so near to the fox and
badger holes the side of the riding rink that had been cut out of the
slope, where I would construct a bunker of my own upon my return